


Bartholomew

by le_chat_vilain



Series: The Joker and the Thief [11]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham City Sirens (Comics), Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Violence, prison break - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5221835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/le_chat_vilain/pseuds/le_chat_vilain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkins enters Arkham Asylum in search of Selina, and finds very quickly she’s bitten of far more than she can chew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bartholomew

**Author's Note:**

> A little bit of violence in this one, and some cussing, but otherwise it’s just a heavy serving of angst to lay down some plot.

The second my eyes adjust it’s clear something is wrong; there’s not a soul in sight. No receptionist, no guards, no other visitors, nothing. I slide over the desk and search Selina’s name in the database.

_000583 KYLE, SELINA, EW-B3-003_

East wing, block three, cell three. Solitary confinement. I buzz myself through into the east wing.

As I creep down the main hall I am still met with no resistance, not from outside forces. The ringing starts in my ears and I try to silence it; just being here in this place again is making my skin crawl. I push through the discomfort, the flashes of past horrors, the sweat slickening my palms and the hairs standing on the back of my neck.

I follow the signs to block three. Still no staff. I am severely regretting coming in here alone at this point, but I’m too stubborn to turn back. I push the gate and it swings open freely with a series of deafening clunks that bounce off the stone walls like the beating of an executioner’s drum. I enter with caution, weapons drawn, and count down the cells. The first two are occupied, and it occurs to me that they might hold potential allies, allies that I am getting the strong feeling I am going to need.

I pause before the glass of the first containment cell: Killer Croc. Useless in this situation. Also, fast asleep, possibly knocked out.

I move onto the next, and before I even get a chance to look I know the gravelly voice and sleazy tone of its occupant.

“Whooahoaa, Secrets, you dumbass! He’s got you right where he wants you now, baby doll!”

“Victor, what the fuck is going on here? Where are all the guards?” I hiss at him.

Suddenly, I hear the slamming of the steel door behind me and turn to see an orderly, face covered by a surgical mask waving at me ominously.

“I was gonna tell you to run, but looks like it’s too late. Why would he post guards when he wants you to get in here, hmm?” he taunts. “Hey, listen, I can help you, there’s a way out these fuckweasels don’t know about yet.”

I stare at him for a long hard minute. Zsasz was one of the few people in this place who actually could prove useful: he’s intelligent enough, ruthless, and impersonal. On the flip side, he might just kill me because he feels like it if he’s in such a mood.

“Fine,” I tell him, deciding that I’m likely a dead woman walking anyway. I hit the access button repeatedly but nothing happens, in frustration I kick the glass and let out a roar. “God, fucking damn it!”

“Looks like he’s thought of everything. You better not keep him waiting, sugar. She’s in the next one. If you make it out alive…come back and see me. I’ll get you outta here real fast,” he says with a wink and a leer.

“Can you at least tell me what’s going on?” I implore. “Who’s doing this?”

“Black Mask,” he tells me, looking me in the eye.

“Bullshit, he’s dead. Selina put him down herself.”

“Don’t believe me, huh? Go see for yourself,” he tells me with a sweeping gesture, then sits back down on the bench in his cell, folding his arms. I flick him an annoyed glance before proceeding to the next cell.

The door is hanging wide open, and I can see her through the glass, bound and gagged, facing me. When she looks up, I can almost hear her heartstrings snap, tears start to well in her eyes and she shakes her head profusely, struggling against her bonds. Before I get a chance to even raise my weapon at her, her eyes widen at something behind me and I spin around to face the menace.

“I told you I wasn’t lying!” I hear Zsasz shout. He wasn’t. Sure enough, before me stands Black Mask, or at least someone doing a damn good cosplay of him.

“Welcome home, child.” That voice. I know that voice. It sends a shiver down my spine and my heart begins to pound, the ringing thunderous in my ears and the sweat beading on my forehead.

“You’re not him, who are you?” I demand shakily, raising my gun and trying to keep a hold of my concentration.

“Don’t you know, dear?” he taunts, “Why don’t you look into my eyes and find out?”

Weapon still trained on his chest, I dare to step closer, then I see them: the glowing red fades away to a pale grey, so pale they’re almost white. They’re just like mine. I knew I knew that voice, the same one that haunted me as I drifted in and out of consciousness and drug induced hazes for years inside this hell hole.

“You. What do you want, Jeremiah?”

A sinister laugh rumbles from deep in his chest, and I can feel something tugging at the edges of my mind, a blackness, toxic, cruel, trying to take a hold.

“You’re sick, cousin. I just want to cure you,” he croons. Without warning or hesitation I drop my weapon, my hand just releases it as though it has a mind of it’s own. “Though, I was hoping you’d bring your boyfriend. That’s a sickness I’d like to study, wouldn’t you?”

“You leave him out of this!” I growl, reaching for the blade on my back.

“Interesting, why so defensive?” he muses, walking towards me and starting to circle. When I attempt to take a swing at him my hands drop the sword, again of their own volition. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in love with him…”

“Look, you can do whatever you want to me, kill me, torture me, give me that fucking lobotomy, I don’t care, just leave him out of this,” I barter.

“Well, well, well, look who learnt to care… The man’s a lunatic and a scourge on this city, but credit where credit’s due he achieved something even I couldn’t…he actually changed you, and for the better too it would seem. Well, after a fashion. Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Miss Hawkins,” he mutters, walking around me divesting me of all my arms while I stand paralyzed. I try to will myself to move but there’s something holding me back, I’m no longer in control. I manage to glance over at Victor, and he returns it with a shrug and shake of his head, both loaded with pity, mouthing the words ‘I warned you.’ I must be in seriously dire straits if Victor Zsasz can’t even enjoy the spectacle of violence I know is about to ensue.

All I feel next is pain at the back of my head, and I hit the cold, tiled floor as everything begins to blur and all I can hear is the ringing. As darkness creeps into the corners of my vision and takes hold, I see him crouch and duck his head to look into my eyes and extract my contact lenses. I don’t know where he’s hit me or what with, but I don’t even have the strength to flinch. As I close my eyes for what could be the last time, all I can hear is his voice and that incessant buzz.

I don’t know how long it’s been when I finally come to, but as I open my eyes they’re flooded with harsh bright light. My limbs are belted down and I can feel the straps around my head, the anxiety winding up in my chest when I realize that I’m back in this room again.

_Treatment Block B, Room 103: Electroshock Therapy._

I marched into this place, a woman made of diamond and iron, a force to be reckoned with, invincible and terrifying. Now, I feel like that fifteen year old girl again, an exposed nerve, terrified and helpless, electrodes strapped to my temples in nothing but my underwear and dress. I’m just waiting for the whirring to start and the pain to rack my body. I try to calm myself but it’s no use, the memories come crashing through like a tsunami, panic wrapping its tentacles around my entire body until I’m shaking and breathless.

He was right, I never should have come here.

I hear the clang of metal on metal and the snapping of rubber gloves accompanied by a sinister laugh. Looking to my left, I expect to see Black Mask, and those horrifying red eyes, but instead it’s just Jeremiah, in his lab coat and specs, grinning down at me with malice. Eyes just like mine, and just as full of darkness.

“Such fear. You should be afraid, you’re very sick and you’ve been very naughty, but I’m going to make you all better again,” he tells me, stroking my cheek. I recoil from his touch and he clicks his tongue at me. Glaring at him, I summon the courage to speak.

“At least tell me, how you knew,” I request. If I’m going to die, I need to know.

“Oh dear, you really think anything goes on in this place without my knowing about it?” he scoffs. “Who do you think told your father you were dead, hmm? It was just easier. You remember, it was around that time when Scarecrow was causing all sorts of trouble, I just marked you down as one of the casualties and figured you’d be back soon enough as a Jane Doe.”

“You…let me go? Why?”

“You were more trouble than you were worth thanks to your father’s constant pestering. ‘Help her, you have to help her’ day in and day out, it was pathetic. I see now that I was wrong to think you wouldn’t make that jump from animal cruelty to murder, but we all make mistakes,” he shrugs.

“So when he turned up dead you knew…and you knew I’d escaped with Selina…”

“Well, I had an inkling,” he deadpans. “Then when I found out you’d been playing Bonnie and Clyde with him? The chance to kill two birds with one stone was just too good to resist. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d catch you on my first try.”

Now for the part when I start to beg, try to plead my case and hope some of the silver has rubbed off of Jay’s tongue and onto mine.

“You said I’ve changed, you said there could be hope for me. Come on, Jerry, you know we’re alike, you know we’ve got the same…inclinations. We’re family. Think of what you could achieve if instead of eradicating the Arkham in me, you nurtured it, guided it down a more noble path,” I bargain. “Let me surprise you.”

“Tempting, but no, I’ve made more than enough mistakes with you as it is. The Hawkins in you is too strong,” he denies me. “And just because you and that psychopathic pet of yours think you love each other doesn’t mean you’ve really changed, it doesn’t mean you don’t still hurt each other, does it? I bet you both get off on it.”

I swallow hard, caught off guard at the accuracy of his assumption. He doesn’t mean hurt feelings, he means broken bones and black eyes. Pleasure and pain are very blurred lines in our house. Every fight ends in a fuck because most of the time we can’t tell the difference; to us, there isn’t a difference. It all speaks to something deeper, the reason why we do it: we need to. It’s how we express ourselves, the only way we know sometimes, and that’s something unchangeable.

When a punch says ‘I love you,’ when fingers wrapped tight around throats say ‘I need you,’ and when tongues lapping blood from gifts of fresh lacerations say ‘I’ll never leave you,’ - that’s a level of broken that can’t be fixed.

“That’s none of your business!”

“Oh, hit a nerve did I?” he snickers. “You know change isn’t the same as finding someone who’s the same brand of sick as you, dear, and neither is love for that matter. Does he tell you he loves you? I wonder if he’ll come for you. Interesting to consider that either of you could be capable of such altruism, but him especially. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Oh, because you know so much about love! You are just as bad as Amadeus, you think I’m insane, mate, look in the mirror!” I spit at him in frustration, and he strikes me across the cheek before thrusting a paddle into my mouth. The machine whirrs to life and I struggle against the restraints as though I have a hope of breaking free. He punches me in the stomach, winding me, and I can feel my eyes beginning to water.

This is it, the end. It’s going to be slow and painful, and all I can hope is that Jay doesn’t come for me, that he denies this lunatic what he wants, but deep in my heart I know he will. I just hope he survives, whether I do or not.

“Let the treatment begin.”


End file.
